


Individuality

by lazywriter7



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Dimensions, Avengers Family, Emotional Repression, Except when she tries really hard, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Natasha Feels, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Post-Avengers (2012), Red Room (Marvel), Spies and Assassins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-31
Updated: 2017-03-08
Packaged: 2018-09-21 03:45:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9530189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazywriter7/pseuds/lazywriter7
Summary: “I’ve got a psych eval for you. Pathological liar. Mild sociopathy. A disturbing inclination towards violence.”“All these might seem like deal-breakers…except the teensy tiny fact that all of these are the reason you’re the Black Widow.” Stark's eyes are bright, brighter than most flames. “The saving the world kind, not the assassinating senators for deranged Russians kind. Heroes aren’t healthy. If everything was alright with our heads, we’d be swanning off to our corporate day jobs and dropping our kids off at daycare, not wandering around trying to punch evil in the face.”Natalia Alianovna Romanova, foremost Black Widow of the Red Room program, wakes up in the body of one Natasha Romanov, Avenger.She thought her world was strange. This one is stranger.





	1. Chapter 1

She wakes up in a bright room.

She hasn’t opened her eyelids yet, but she can see them hued orange, warmth soaking into the thin skin. Feel a cool breeze tussling past her toes, poking out of silky smooth sheets.

She doesn’t move.

She can’t feel anyone else in there with her, though that isn’t a guarantee of anything. No mattress springs creaking, no foreign sweat in the air (though her nose can detect something faint, citrusy sharp-like oranges), no ghostly warmth lingering in the sheets. An unnoticeable, indrawn breath-and Natalia turns from her back onto her side, eyes still closed, as naturally as a human body can turn in sleep.

Her hand’s flung out now, fingertips searching, and there’s nothing in bed with her.

_No handcuffs._

Natalia shakes the thought clear with a mental twitch, and opens her mouth in a naturalistic yawn. Draws a knee back, stretches. Her left hand finds one knife holster, strapped to her thigh. Otherwise, she’s bare.

Well. Looks like the Madame’s up to another of her challenges.

Natalia opens her eyes, and takes the ceiling in. No cracks in the plaster, no spiders. One, two, three…six cameras embedded overall. All except one disabled. It’s the obvious one, right overhead. She wonders why it was left.

Well, the game is up. They know she’s awake, if they didn’t know the second her breathing pattern changed (though she has been working on that). Natalia pulls herself up into a seated position, and feels the mattress give way under her like a fairy’s dream. Barely a squeak at all. She wouldn’t have known if there was anyone in bed with her.

She’s pinching the material between her fingers before she’s fully cognisant-she’s never felt cotton like this. Madame has really outdone herself this time. What is this supposed to be? A _dvoryanin_ ’s pleasure room?

The sheets whisper across her thighs as she swings them out of bed, bare feet coming to rest cautiously against the floor. A toe, another…then her heel, and then the arches settling against the warmed tile. So, not the floor this time, then. She wouldn’t expect Madame to repeat her tricks. Even though Natalia should have known better-wake in a dungeon, put your bare feet on the floor. Water and electricity. She deserved every jolt, splashing away like an idiot.

Another twitch and she shakes the memory-if it was a memory, and not an implanted lesson-aside; all that has no bearing on her current situation. Extrapolating based on outdated data is an amateur’s mistake. They never follow the same rules. There are no rules.

She pushes herself to the balls of her feet. There are windows at the corner of her vision-windows that let in the light, ceiling to floor glass. She walks towards the door in front of her instead; ignoring obvious temptation is the first thing she was ever taught. There are no traps without bait.

She pushes the door open, and Natalia blinks.

 

She isn’t proud of how long she spends just taking the room in. There are more tiles, and a basin, wrought of granite, grey speckled with green. A granite counter, and a cabinet, with a frameless mirror mounted on the door. Arching taps of stainless steel gleaming in the morning light. A shower cubicle to the extreme end, a speckless toilet. A bathtub that looked like it was hewn of stone, luminous and obsidian.

This is an attached bathroom, and is a common feature of many houses over the world, American or otherwise. It has no right to make Natalia draw short, pause for three seconds longer than usual. Madame would have caught her eyes widening on camera-she’s already failed.

But she steps inside anyway, sees her hand stroke over the smooth granite of the basin. Something sets the tap off-motion sensored, of course, she’s being unbearably slow today-and clear water ripples out of the nozzle in a graceful arc. Natalia runs her fingers through the cool gush, watches the transparent lines of liquid stream between her knuckles. She cups her hands under the stream, and brings the liquid to her face, splashing gently. The water runs pleasantly down her jaw, soaking a few strands of her chin-length hair…it’s never been cut this short before. She doesn’t bother noting the other differences in the mirror-all the differences over the months and years seem to run into one pale faced, red haired trail, difficult to keep track.

(a lie-she picks up on one thing, and it’s an irrelevant thing. The lack of bags under her eyes.)

She lets herself stand at the basin for a second more. The smell of oranges is even stronger here, fresh and acid-sweet. She pivots on her feet and walks out, feet curling in to press against the warm floor. The other door is a walk in wardrobe-she peruses through an array of Western clothes, finds a set made of what feels like black Kevlar, durable and flexible. She slips it on without much ado, while strapping on whatever blades and guns she can find in the drawers (she can’t actually fit all of them on her, not while keeping them concealed, which is mildly disappointing), and surprisingly enough, a set of enlarged bracelets that glow blue on activation and apparently, give off charges high enough to electrocute.

With a bit of experimentation, Natalia discovers that said bracelets also shoot tiny disks capable of further electrocution, and unfold into batons for close combat. She’s almost certain the button at the base of the thumb discharges a grappling hook but she can’t quite test it without drawing attention to-

She can’t wear this. It _glows_. This was an utter waste of time, she should have been out exploring the location minutes ago. Natalia pulls the bracelets off in seconds, face wiped and jaw tightened. There’s a last door, and it can only lead outside.

She breathes in before she opens it-she’s never been able to train the impulse out. The door swings outwards, and she’s ready. Far better outfitted than she was the last time, and no amount of soft sheets, bright light and personal bathrooms are going to soften her instincts. Ready for-

A larger living room, even more light, and a man in jogging pants, apparently.

“Morning, Widow.” The man greets her, a large towel flung around a muscular neck seated on broad shoulders. And…smiles.

There isn’t even a split second pause before Natalia feels the responding smile array itself on her features. Relaxes her posture, curves forward invitingly, hip cocked slightly to the right. Her hair brushes against her chin as she tilts her head-it’s too short to be conducive to the image she’s trying to present, and the outfit too severe. Well, she didn’t know the parameters of this, stepping out. Nothing to be done about it now.

The man’s features cloud over almost instantly, bright blonde eyebrows pulling together. He squints at her, and Natalia gazes back, still holding the smile-mind racing to figure out where she’s stumbling, what she’s got wrong. He blinks at her for two seconds, then his expression clears up, a short, amused laugh exiting those lips.

“No, I didn’t ask the waitress out. She offers the free coffee to be nice. Stop doing that.” The words definitely exist in English, but don’t make sense when they’re put altogether. Regardless, Natalia instinctively obeys the command and stops…doing it. Whatever she had been doing before. How did he know what-

“Tony’s up early for once, and he’s going to throw a fit if we’re all not at breakfast together.” The man informs her…after turning his back to her, and commencing walking.

He stops, turns around. Natalia realises she’s been glued to the same spot, standing in the doorway of the room she’d woken up in, staring at his back ( _he turned his back to me, he turned his back to_ _-_ _what an idio_ _-_ ), instead of following after as she was clearly expected to.

“Hawk run away with your tongue?” The man asks, blue eyes twinkling in the light. She didn’t realise that happened outside of old storybooks.

“..No.” Natalia can hear herself say, as her lips muster a smile. A stranger smile, one she’s not used to, one that issues no invitations and makes no challenges, one she’s been told exists but never seen for herself. A part of her registers that he’s just mucked up an idiom, but you never point out the flaws in the delusion. You store them up quietly in your head, for reiteration when you’re fighting your way out.

The man’s eyebrows dip for a second again, like he’d been expecting something better. “You sure?”

She takes three steps to catch up to him, and executes the smile to perfection. “Positive.”

The man’s shoulders lift up and down in a shrug-he’s going to be difficult to take out, that much she can tell, but she’s felled brawnier before. They reach a pair of steel doors and there’s a tiny ding as they slide open.

(It’s like every movie she’s ever watched.)

The man steps in, and Natalia follows him. The lift closes in on them. It’s a four feet by four feet space, rather expansive as lifts go. The man has excellent stance, it would be difficult to shake his balance. He’s got the bearing of a soldier. He doesn’t seem like the type that would defend well against something more eclectic though, like mixed martial arts…maybe a thigh chokehold would be best to start off with-though it wouldn’t do to make assumptions…

“Good morning, Agent Romanov.” A voice rings out from speakers she didn’t see-and Natasha quenches a million curses that spring up in her mind. Fool. Amateur. Getting distracted by obvious opponents only to get taken out by a subtler threat, how many times has she used the play herself, how many times has she been the subtler threat herself; moulding herself to the figure of one military officer posturing against another, testosterone flying high, her slipping strychnine into his drink in the bargain. She needs to start doing better. Madame expects better.

“Agent Romanov?” The voice lightly enquires, and Natalia realises he’s speaking to her.

“Good morning.” She repeats back, voice stoked to a lower, huskier register. Probably this is the ‘Tony’ the man was mentioning, apparently monitoring their-her-moves the second they stepped onto the elevator. Likely from the very beginning. It makes more sense why the blonde man felt secure enough to turn his back to Natalia, though no amount of external surveillance could have stopped her had she decided to take him out.

“Everyone in the kitchen already, Jarvis?” The man asks, patting the back of his head with the towel. His grip looks strong, but there is slack-she could whip the cloth out of his hand in a second, wind it round his neck in maybe two-

“Mr Odinsson is yet to be persuaded out of his quarters.” Not Tony then-Jarvis, informs them primly. “I have also been instructed to tell you that ‘having the super soldier serum is the only reason you need to stuff your face with Cheetos and never run another mile again, get your ass up here Rogers.’ ”

“Tell Tony his input is highly appreciated.” The man-Rogers, returns back in visible amusement. “And that I’ll see him in the jogging park tomorrow. Five am.”

Natalia for her part, now has too many clues to what looks like an increasingly incoherent puzzle. Rogers greeted her as ‘Widow’, which implies they’re well aware of her identity, but Jarvis just addressed her by her…real last name, as real as anything is. Appended to the curious epithet of ‘Agent’. They have knowledge about her that no one outside the Red Room can possess, they moved her in the night…yet this has been nothing like one of Madame’s games. She has details, but is missing the most vital part-motive. Why _is_ she here? What is the end game? The situation, the location they’ve placed her in is farcical, but they’re pooling from…real details. Why make her play pretend if they’re all aware of the pretence-if they keep adding references that remind her, that have a basis in truth?

The door dings, and Natalia and Rogers step out in unison. She slows a tad, and walks half a step behind him, taking in the surroundings. The room plan is open, the windows are everywhere-blue sky, feathery clouds, a city skyline. If she wasn’t entirely sure before, she is now: they’re high up, in a building that scrapes the skies, right in the centre of American civilisation. As they walk ahead, the views shift, and she can see…yes. That’s the Empire State.

She’s aware of Rogers stopping beside her, but she continues on; paces to the end of the room till her palm comes up to press against the glass of the win…the wall. It’s smooth and cool to the touch, her skin sticking clammily to the clear surface. She can’t hear the roar of the wind that would be so overpowering at this height-another point to the architecture of the place. There isn’t even a sliver of errant air making its way through.

...more importantly, it’s physically present, and the way she’s pressed so closed, angled her frame…she’d have caught any holograms. This isn’t a screen, isn’t a projection. She’s in New York City.

New York is not a secured location. A skyscraper smack dab in the middle of New York is not a secured location. SHIELD has bases here, and a dozen other American organisations. This could always be a false, generated dream but…those always come to her as memories, after. She’s never experienced one, while possessing the faculties to comprehend its fallaciousness. And it’s never been one this outlandish. The memories are meant to supplement the lies, the fabricated backstory.  
  
(Besides, she’s too old for false memories now. Isn’t she? Hasn’t she proven herself to be better? What else does Madame _wan_ _-_ )

“You sleepwalking, Romanov?”

Natalia resists the urge to swerve around instantly-she’s erred, made the same mistake she was disdaining Rogers for ( _they’re monitoring you here, eyes everywhere, you always have your back to them_ ), but that’s no reason to drop minimal caution. She turns casually, takes in the kitchenette counter she’d apparently walked right by. Tall cabinets, six electric stoves, an island at the centre that a bespectacled man’s leaning his elbows on, head drooping. Rogers is opening the fridge, pulling out a milk carton, and off by the side, near the espresso machine, is the source of the voice that just hailed her.

Tony Stark.

Several things settle instantly into place within Natalia’s mind-Stark Towers, of course, opened six weeks ago. Several parties wanted their hands on the plans of the reactor that currently fuels the building, but no one came close to finding reliable intel on where such plans could be obtained. Either Stark ran a tight, trustworthy ship, or he was the most paranoid bastard this side of the ocean. And now she’s standing in the centre of what appears to be his private penthouse.

This isn’t a Red Room game.

Her heart picks up, if only by a little. She can hear her blood thrumming in her ear drums. This is an alien environment, even though no one has yet displayed any hostile behaviour. They even gave her guns. You can’t play people to engineer situations to your advantage if you don’t know what you’re playing _for._ What do they want from her?

Why are they pretending to know her?

“Can’t the baby hawk fly without his mama for one measly mission?” And there’s that hawk reference again-but Natalia takes a second to realise Stark is wiggling an eyebrow at her suit. If the scenario here is that they know her from before-then the her from before didn’t wear this…mission-appropriate suit for casual situations. This is apparently a casual situation.

(Now that her perceptions are no longer limited by the assumption that this is another Red Room simulation, the proposed scenario is becoming clearer. By all set up appearances, she…lives here. Or stayed over with some other resident…though she hasn’t been getting that impression from any of the people in this room, added to the lack of another presence when she was waking up. They’re all gathered for breakfast-very domestic, but she isn’t getting a familial vibe, not quite. And that’s not even considering the incomprehensible fact of it being _Tony Stark’s penthouse_.)

She discards a dozen responses in split-seconds; the go-to playful and coy, meaningless repartee doesn’t seem quite right. The scenario is that they know her from before. Which means she needs to play it like…they know her.

(there’s a voice in her head saying that she doesn’t know her, but it doesn’t contribute anything helpful, and is hence of no use).

This goes against every instinct she ever has-namely to downplay the amount of threat she poses, just the doe-eyed redhead from around the block-except for the way it also feels just right for the words to instinctually roll themselves off her tongue. “Couldn’t fit as many guns in the jeans and t-shirt.”

There’s a light exhale of amusement from the man with the spectacles at the other end of the counter. Rogers closes the refrigerator door with a shake of his head and a tiny grin, and Stark heaves an exaggerated sigh at her. Bingo.

Natalia smiles.

Stark moves his inquisitive stare away from her to the other new entrant to the room, and it’s further assurance that this was the right move to make. One hand is holding up a massive coffee mug to his chest, the other is wagging an errant finger at Rogers. “Tut tut, Captain. That’s wanton disregard of the personal safety of people in this Tower, right there, a subject that’s very dear to my heart-though of course you’d encourage violence, what with the way you abuse my poor punching bags on a regu-”

Natalia’s mind stutters again.

_“..get your ass up here Rogers.”_

_“_ _-_ _having the super soldier serum is the only reason you need to_ _-_ _”_

_“_ _-_ _tut tut, Captain.”_

She hasn’t heard too many stories, but she has heard them. Knowing the myths that people cling on to gives a useful insight into the things they revere, a great tool for motivation-and the Americans do love their myths. Except standing across from her is a real, living man _(if it all just isn’t in her head)_ , wiping milk from his mouth with his knuckles, expression supremely unconcerned. “I don’t see why I have to tiptoe around with what I can do while Bruce here gets to _strut_.”

It’s an in-joke, that much is evident, with…Bruce in the corner emitting a small cough, as if to quietly announce his non-involvement. Stark gestures openly with his free hand again, somehow less and _more_ animated than she’s ever seen him in footage, coffee sloshing all over the rims of his mug. “He used my particle accelerator, you broke my gym equipment. Different versions of ‘ _letting_ _go’_.  And if he were really strutting, we’d all be human mulch right now.”

Bruce coughs again, an errant curl flopping to the fore of his spectacles, which he then pushes away with a finger. Natalia knows well enough the value of a good façade, but it’s a little difficult accepting that image in the same breath as ‘human mulch’.

She’s getting a lot of good data without prompting, whether she buys it is another fact altogether, but it is a fair amount; which makes it a little disappointing (not, because emotion has no place when she’s making her analyses) when the…doorbell starts ringing?

It’s a wail like nothing she’s heard before, high-pitched and piercing, echoing round and round the open floor plan. It makes something like resignation steal over Bruce’s features for a second before they wipe themselves completely, a grim cast take over Rogers’ jaw. Alarm, then. The situation’s morphing a little faster than she’s being able to keep pace with.

Stark for his part, looks like Christmas has come early. The coffee is draining into his gullet faster than it should be possible for any human throat to swallow; he finishes it off with a smack of his lips, clanks the mug down and practically beams. “You need to look into crystal balls and tarot cards if the murderous spy thing backfires on you, Prophet Romanov-looks like your premonition’s come true today.” A sly glance sideways at Rogers. “What say we _both_ let loose a little today, do the catwalk. First person to down twenty goons gets homecooked dinner by Bruce.”

“Deal.” Rogers doesn’t even take a second to hesitate; Bruce’s halfhearted, “Hey,” getting lost somewhere in the background. The air of the room is changing, thickening-adrenaline is ramping up, an expectant sort of tension brimming in the environment. Stark is fiddling around with what looks like bracelets around his wrist, Rogers thumbing at a communicator he just fished out of his pocket, brows pulled together in concentration. It looks like everyone is getting ready to go….do something- _down twenty goons_ -probably fight, and Natalia has no context for what she’s supposed to be doing in the situation, no preparation or intel for the battle.

There’s a tiny leap in her heartrate. It might be getting time for her to break character.

 Except, then...Bruce speaks, head inclined towards her just a little, voiced in a low mutter that’s evidently just for her. “Ready to save the world?”

It’s sardonic, and insincere, and the brittle cast to the words accompanied by the ill-amused glint in Bruce’s eyes is enough to tell her how much he doesn’t mean it. Except for the way he also utterly, completely does.

Natalia survives on the dint of her adaptability, lives by her skill to wheedle information, process it and respond accordingly. Yet for several long seconds, Natalia _cannot_ parse the information that’s being presented to her. The words echo round and round her skull- _save the world save the world save the world_ _-_ and she sits in absolute stillness and stares.

This isn’t an assignment she’s ever been given before.

“Natasha?”

Her lungs are pulling air in-she’s aware of it, she can see her chest rise out of the corner of her vision, for all like it feels like she isn’t breathing. A part of her mind registers the name, very distantly.

Her mouth spouts gibberish. “Ready when you are.”

 

~

 

The Avengers.

 

She hasn’t ever heard the name before-which means either superpowered vigilantism is a lot more discreet in her world, or this world is ahead of hers by months, even years. And that’s how she’s chosen to frame it in her mind, for now. This world, and that. Theirs, and hers. Which is dream, which reality-whether it’s the Red Room playing tricks again, or Hydra, or another foreign organisation that’s gotten hold of her and decided to inject a strange fantasy into her head to keep her pliant and drooling-or whether she really is Natasha Romanov, and maybe she’s been brainwashed into reverting to an earlier state, implanted with false beliefs…it’s irrelevant. All of it. She’s never been one to vainly grasp at control when it’s been denied to her. She can’t change the parameters of the situation she’s been placed in. So all that’s left to do is adapt to it, gather all available information and wait and see what comes.

Half-mutated sea creatures with cyborg implants, apparently. Natalia has seen some ghastly things in her nightmares, but nothing this…unreal. Black and grey, with poison green veins that shine venomously on their underbellies, long metal pincers and clacking mouths. A constant _glug-glug_ death rattle from their throats, deceptive because apparently being above land does nothing to handicap them, or diminish their fighting ability.

Natalia has been in worse situations than this, circumstances where one wrong word, one errant twitch of the hand could result in prolonged torture, imprisonment, ignominious death. A smile in the wrong place, and a shot to the head. That’s the kind of stakes she’s used to. This is nothing like that, except it’s also challenging on levels she’s never been challenged before. She’s accustomed to crouching in dark corners, quick strangulations, silent takedowns. Not this outright…battlefield in Midtown, kicking and spinning and landing and hitting out again, one enemy after the other. She can feel the sweat leaking past the roots of her hair, crawling down her jaw, the sun beating at the back of her neck. There are helicopters. There are pictures being taken- _cover blown cover blown take shelter_ _-_ video footage being shot, at this very second, broadcasting to the world what exactly the Black Widow can do.

(This world knows exactly what the Black Widow can do. Has known for a long time. This world apparently owes its continued existence to her.)

Natalia spits out a broken tooth, and hits harder.

The real Avengers seem barely phased. Stark’s robot suit ostensibly has greater firepower and flight capabilities than she’d noted in recorded footage back…back where she comes from. He’s whizzing around the air, scattering severed tentacles with repulsor burns wherever he goes, making figure eights in the sky and gleefully showboating. Captain…(she has to acknowledge fact, especially when it’s dressed up in red, white and blue and bouncing shields at impossible angles in front of her) America seems fairly focused on the task in comparison, disabling one creature then moving on-except for the part where he’s also wryly replying to every sarcastic quip Stark is making on the team comms. And perhaps that’s the most challenging thing of all.

The _voices_. Natalia’s spine stiffens every time there’s a “You reckon we’d ever be able to have Japanese after this?” followed by a responding, “I don’t know, will you ever be able to control yourself from eyeing up the teriyaki chef?” “Don’t pretend like all those knives don’t turn you on Captain, the competence, the sheer controlled _violence_ _-_ ” On and on, till Natalia feels close to snapping, the friendly voices creeping intimately, trustingly in her ear-except of course that’s the moment Stark chooses to call out, all business, “Widow, behind you,” and the Captain says, “I’m going for the gaggle at East 53rd street, Widow, cover me,” and just…

The expectations. The reflexive tip offs. The casual…teamwork. The red and blue figure catapulting himself with inhuman grace into the crowd of monsters, based on the easy assumption that she’ll be there, at his back. Except the reason she can see him fling himself at the creature with the whip-long stingers is that she _is_ there, shoving the baton in her right hand up the gullet of the creature at Rogers’ seven o’clock. A jolt runs through the bones of her arm, and the creature shudders and falls limp, the smell of burning flesh pervading the air. Widow’s Bite, Stark had called it on their way over, casually discussing a number of upgrades he’d meant to make but that she’d have to wait for until the next time.

Tony Stark had _made_ this. The way he’d made his AI, and the Jericho missile that could blow up a mountain range, and the Iron Man suit. He’d made this for her.

(Even the handcuffs dangling at her bedside for seventeen years hadn’t been made for her).

This would be the easiest time to sneak away. Yes, the eyes of the world are fixated on them but there are enough guts and gore and fluids to distract anyone, and she’s a professional. Remove herself from this fight she has no stakes in, from the Avengers where she’s constantly second-guessing and leaving room for errors and going along with every situation, regain a bit of power and control. She has an inkling that her safehouses haven’t disappeared anywhere. She needs time to regroup, plan, conduct some recon.

Except recon is best conducted among people actually privy to relevant information, and the Avengers are perhaps the best source there is. She isn’t going to find out anything new about herself or her situation from blending among strangers. She’s exactly where she needs to be, right now.

Natalia grunts and drops her head to her knees, breathing heavily. There’s a slithering noise to her left; she shoots it. Acrobatics are only fun for so long.

Then lightning takes over the skies and Natalia ceases thinking about anything else entirely.

“Had a good nap, Pikachu?” Stark snickers into the comm. He seems to be speaking at the tumultuous clouds overtaking the erstwhile bright noon sky...except for the fact that Natalia’s increasingly being able to make out a figure silhouetted against said clouds, glowing red and silver amongst the intermittent flashes. The clouds _growl_ and…

And lightning strikes, Natalia’s eyes searing themselves shut. When they flutter open, there’s faint rain and the stench of fried flesh in the breeze, incinerated bodies studded around her as if nature had a mind of its own, a huge bolt splitting itself midway over her head and spearing everyone but her within a mile radius. She’s receiving input but it makes no sense, she blinks and-

And the ground shudders under her feet, as a man lands not hundred metres away from her. His musculature is like nothing she’s ever seen, covered up in plates of armor made of unidentifiable metal. Blond hair whipping in the gale that’s starting to stir, a red cape that drags on the concrete. His right hand holds a large silver hammer, sparking at the edges and glowing with indecipherable markings.

He looks aside, and smiles at her, jaw strong and genuine. “Apologies for the lateness, comrade.” It’s a refined accent she cannot place…which is only the fifth on the list of impossibles she’s begun to compile in the last one minute.

Stark snorts so hard in her ear that it’s surprising he’s still airborne and hasn’t just crashed somewhere under the force of his amusement. “Romanov, do _not_ tell me you’re going to let him get away with calling you _comr_ _-_ ”

“Enough, Iron Man.” Rogers interrupts, tone serious. “Thor, help me finish up the stragglers on 54th. Iron Man, see if Hulk needs any help with the manholes. Widow, as you will.”

Thor. _Thor._ The man spins his hammer around in his palm, shoots her another roguish grin and…shoots off into the air, presumably to help Captain America. Natalia doesn’t fault herself for being …. unresponsive enough at what just transpired, to fail to notice that the ground underneath her is still shaking.

Something roars in the space behind her, and Natalia has no space for calculations. She whips around instantly, weapons charged and up in the air, heart thundering in the most primal response that a human faced with inexplicable danger can have. Her eyes see…something, and her heart rattles and her shoulders pull back, instincts clawing in pure flight. It was almost easier, to break down the details of the…Norse thunder god that had grinned at her not seconds prior, because he still looked like a man. This…this.

This is tall, taller than some buildings, muscles bigger than entire cars. This throws an entire car at a half-formed sea creature scrabbling out of a hole in the ground, and the creature emits a pitiful whelp before it gets knocked away, flattened entirely. This stamps a foot in rage, and creates a crater in solid concrete that billows dust for hundreds of metres. This is pure rage. Green, and…and terrifying and…

_Objective. Use objective adjectives._ Some dead-to-feeling, trained part of her mind reiterates-but the living human that is Natalia Romanova can feel her blood surge and the hairs on her skin rise at the _howl_ that the green monster emits, expelling sheer wrath into the air. It’s desecrating the sea creatures like insectoids, deadly sharp pincers going through its toes and barely making it flinch, stomping and hurling and destroying and altogether clogging up the holes that had been spewing these ocean spawn relentlessly for the past hour. It’s…it’s on their side.

“Alright, the big guy seems to have gotten it under control.” Stark seems as upbeat as ever, like he’s accustomed to fighting alongside people that can bring down lightning and raze buildings with the swipe of a hand. “I’d rather like not to be billed for the reconstruction of half of Midtown this time-oblige us with a lullaby, Widow?”

The…the Hulk roars as if to rend apart the sky, punching the façade of a building, brick and concrete crumpling around his knuckles. Stark is still using a light voice, but there’s audible strain around the syllables. “Natasha, I know you’re firmly committed to the fall of the capitalist agenda and all, but those were still people’s apartments falling to rubble so maybe if you could get a move on and-”

_And what?_ Natalia could ask, _and what?_ Except the monster has turned its head, nose caught by the scent of the one living human still within five hundred metres of it. It staggers a few steps and the dark eyes catch sight of her, mouth contorting into indiscriminate shapes. The rain is a torrential downpour now, the Hulk’s each heavy step rumbling up her spine and Natalia has to-needs to-move move _move…_

Fear isn’t something she has much experience with. Fear leaves no space for any other thought, and Natalia’s life is nothing but thought-planned calculations taking place in the split seconds to serve an agenda, to extort information out of an enemy, to convince and persuade and escape with her life intact, each and every time. She has no space left over for fear. Not when she’s sleeping in a mafioso’s bed, infiltrating organisations, withstanding interrogations.

Here? There’s nothing to think about. Not when it stands fifty metres away from her, staring her down, fingers capable of snapping her frame in two with barely a twist. There is no rhyme or reason in that feral glare, the twitching nose, no smooth words that can calm the enraged breaths that heave from that gigantic chest, blowing her hair back like a gale. It could stand paralysed for hours, and she wouldn’t be able to harm a hair on its head. It could quash her under its foot in a mere second.

There isn’t space for anything but fear.

There’s a thunderous clamour, the mass before her finally moving-Natalia’s eyes fall shut _run run **run** too la_ _-_ but she feels no pain. She feels nothing different at all, except rain droplets on her face, and warm gusts of air.

She opens her eyes, and it’s staring at her. It’s crouching down, weight distributed awkwardly, large, stone-like jaw puffing away warm breaths not twenty metres away. Not glaring, just a stare (strange, that she can still tell the difference in this terrified state). The brows pulled together in fury are smoothening out, the enraged snarl relaxing into something…sadder. The eyes…they’re hazel, and they won’t stop looking at her.

_(He looks terrified too)_

He reaches out a hand, and Natalia doesn’t move. He doesn’t make contact. The hand stills a metre away from her, and its size eclipses her entire torso. He’s waiting.

No thoughts. No calculations. Natalia’s heart hammers away like a hummingbird under her chest, and she blinks through lashes clumped with rain, watching a blurry image of her hand rise up as if of its own accord. The Hulk squints at it, face turning from one side to the other like a restless beast’s…but the eyes. The eyes seem to understand.

Their skin makes contact, and Natalia watches her frail, breakable fingers pressed against gigantic ones. She breathes in. He turns them over in achingly soft motions, and now her palm is cradled into a massive one. The eyes drop to their hands too. He breathes out.

Natalia’s heart beats and beats and beats, and it seems less like a frightful bird’s, and more of one crashing against her sternum repeatedly, longing to take flight. She scrapes a nail over his coarse skin, and he shudders. Distraught, more than he had been when metal shards were going through his feet. She watches the green flicker in his eyes, fade out bit by bit. The massive frame opposite her is wracked with convulsions, and she holds on to his hand.

Slowly, she draws him closer to the ground, till he’s nothing but a human being crumpled in a heap, body twitching and shivering. His eyes are dark brown, wide open and glazed over with pain. Natalia looks in them, and can recognise a sight seen too often in the mirror. The monster receding.

_(he isn’t a monster)_

Bruce barely has the energy to crack a smile, but he does; face upside down and lips curving up tiredly. His voice isn’t audible, but she can read his moving lips. _Thank you._

They’re different eyes-brown and hazel. Tired and terrified. But there’s one common thing, and it keeps the blood in her ears roaring. Like her oyster’s cracked open and she can finally peer outside. See what her world had been missing.

 

Trust.

 

Natalia’s heart beats on.

 

~

 

They’re in a giant floating ship in the air. Natalia would feel a bit more perturbed if not for the uniformed men and women walking around, impassive faces and brisk movements and something ineffable about their manner that tells her that each and every one of them could easily blend into a crowd in any country on the planet. They’re weapons, barely sheathed and outnumbering her hundred to one, and it almost feels…familiar. Comfortable.

(besides, she’s faced worse odds before.)

The comfort doesn’t last very long. Madame would have eviscerated her for the very thought-a spy loses all of their usefulness the second they become comfortable. All it takes is being pulled into a bay layered over with a faint chemical scent; seated down in a chair and a woman standing over her, dabbing at her scraped collarbone with a cotton ball dripping in antiseptic.

She barely registers the sting. Every single cut on her skin, every abrasion gets cleaned. Two butterfly bandages-one on her temple, one high on her left forearm. She’s instructed to gulp down a couple of pills. She shakes her head. The woman puts the pills away.

She’s been sitting on the chair for thirty minutes, the medic long gone, blinking at the clinical white lighting-when the thought knocks on her brain, quietly. She’s never received medical treatment at someone else’s hand before.

She should have asked the woman’s name.

“-look at you, sitting so still in the Medbay. Giving superheroes a bad name everywhere.” She jerks her head to the side-there’s a new presence in the room. Blonde man, average height, eyes that look colourless under the light. He’s got a tac-vest on, and strangely enough, what looks like a quiver slung over his shoulder. Bare arms covered with scratches everywhere, and his movements clearly indicate bruised ribs-but his mouth is curled upwards, crinkles at the corner of his eyes. He looks comfortable too.

More significantly…he snuck up on her. To state the obvious, that doesn’t happen very often.

“Couldn’t have waited on the mini kaiju slaughter until after I got back?” The man takes two strides, swings himself up on the side of the hospital bed closest to Natasha’s chair, ankles kicking slightly. He’s very comfortable.

(This must be the ‘Hawk’ newly returned from his mission).

Natalia shoots a small smile at him, the same she’s directed towards all the other Avengers. “Welcome back.”

A beat.

She avoids the first blow. Barely sees it coming-just a blur at the corner of her vision, and her head lurches forward, the man’s strike whooshing inches away from where she’d been. She can’t miss the second one-it jabs her right in the side of her neck, carotid sinus pulsing under the force of the blow, as if he’d known exactly how she was going to move before she did it.

The world greys out. Gravity is suddenly more convincing than it’s ever been-she slumps sideways, chair keeling underneath her and hits the floor. As if through water, she hears a clamour over her head-voices, some frantic, some questioning. And through it all, one low pitched, male tone-grimly certain.

“That isn’t Natasha.”

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quotes from _Dr Strangelove (1964)_ and some repurposed ones from _The Avengers (2012)_

The cell they keep her in is made of glass.

It’s interesting, psychologically speaking. Makes sense, easier to keep under constant watch-surveilled through physical eyes as well as cameras. Despite common beliefs, human sight isn’t as easily fooled as hackable cameras. Especially the well trained kind.

The eyes of the man surveying her now seem more than just well trained.

But the cell allows the prisoner unfettered view of their captor as well...and that’s the interesting part. Why not one-way glass? Why not make them crawl under the touch of unseen eyes? Why the equal access, allowing them to _see_ as well as be seen?

She crosses her legs, thighs flat against the chilled concrete, right heel hooking over left ankle. Her tailbone is pressed comfortably against the floor, hands folded together and propped on her knees. She looks at ease. She could propel herself up to a standing position in three quarters of a second, cross the breadth of the cell in two.

The man’s gaze doesn’t flicker. He doesn’t look fooled.

The panic bubbles up distantly at the back of her mind, like a throttled child. She’d shoved it back pitilessly when it had first jerked and thrashed its way into existence; but she can still hear its screams.

He was never fooled. Right at the start maybe, when he’d been prattling away about superheroes and medbays…but then she’d smiled for a second, and. And.

Even at six years of age, Natalia had never been made in a _second._

It’s a curious thing, feeling this transparent. The man…the Hawk’s eyes feel like a blade. Nothing small, like a surgical scalpel, or one of the many knives Natalia usually slides into the holster by her thigh, against the skin of her back. This is large and broad and _sharp_ _-_ and cliché as it is, Natalia feels like an onion on the chopping block. Cut away, layer by layer, to reveal no core. She’s all peel and skin. No heart.

She’s always known that about herself, if there was anything constant about herself to know. It just feels…curious, as good a word as any, to have that knowledge glimmer in someone else’s eyes.

The two-way glass is starting to make a bit more sense.

The Hawk strides forward, into better illumination. Inches away from the glass, he drops to the floor; muscled legs folding underneath each other, crossed arms in front of his chest, elbows resting on his thighs. It takes him three quarters of a second.

“Natalia?” The question rings out, like confirming a sure hunch.

Natalia meets his rain-hued eyes, and tries not to feel hollow. “Yes.”

He leans forward, a little. They’re both sitting on the floor, straight sightlines threaded seamlessly together. “I’m Clint Barton.”

Her throat bobs, when she swallows. He doesn’t take the bait. “I know.”

“It’s 2013.” He says. One year ahead of schedule, then. Not nearly enough time for her to …turn over a new book, and become a world-saving hero. Natalia swallows again, and the motion hurts. “You’re in the body of Natasha Romanov, my teammate.”

He knows Natalia. Which means that this world’s…Natasha Romanov hadn’t lived an idyllic life, filling her with joy and purpose and a deep, ingrained desire to sacrifice her survival at the altar of doing good. Which in turn means that this could work. “Or I’m Natasha Romanov and somebody else just…shoved their fingers into my grey matter and dabbled around. Again.”

Her voice doesn’t shake on the last word, for all that she’s never let words of this kind spill into the open air before. But he _knows_ , and Natalia trusts her instincts and adapts like she does every other time. She’s fooled marks with ragged bits of other people before-a desolate ballerina, a wistful trophy wife, a desecrated prostitute. This time is no different. She’s just scraping out handfuls of her own mutilated guts, and using that instead.

He looks into her eyes-and it’s like he can see every gory pixel, every violated image. Emotions streak across his face too fast to see, for all that it feels like he’s letting her see them. She catches, and clings to the spark of…bleak admiration that she glimpses in that face. Easier than watching it set against a landscape of empathised pain.

“No.” Barton says, and does he always sound that certain? What does that feel like-not to be divided into splinters by your constituent parts? Or maybe it’s just her parts, so ill-fitting because she stole all of them. Because hers were stolen in turn a long time before.

Barton smiles faintly, and it’s an anchor in the churning tornado of questions. He looks her over, and it’s not proprietary. “She’s better than this. You.”

“Sleeping in a bed of cotton and silk. Hot soaks in granite bathtubs, living with billionaires.” _Armour on her skin. Food in her stomach. Friends at her back._ “Makes for a gruelling training routine. I’m sure she’s better than me.”

His smile brightens, fractionally. “Now you’re just being catty.”

“It doesn’t matter, if she was a better person than me.” The words come out bald. Natalia doesn’t blink. “I’d kill her.”

This isn’t some random outburst of emotion, of course. A vulgar, unprompted stripdown of all masks, to her baser, monstrous self. Because Natalia is lying…while she tells the truth, and this is why she bears the mantle of Black Widow.  


Natasha Romanov is not a better person than her. She was searching for a certainty, and she butted against this one, unasked for, somewhere in the throes of this conversation. She knows it like she knows the holster of the Glock 43, fitted into the groove of her palm, like the soft kiss of ballet pumps, and the ecstatic, excruciating weight of her body on her toes. All Widows are cut from the same cloth. She’s played around with her threads, and she’s never found one remotely redeeming.

On the other hand, she has no doubt that Natasha Romanov _is_ better than her. Natalia was made in a second. Natasha has apparently been playing this con for years.

(A desolate ballerina, a wistful trophy wife, a desecrated prostitute. There’s a pattern to the roles Natalia plays, and almost all of them play in turn, on the theme of beauty superimposed on fragility. Beauty to enrapture the beholder, and then it was a waiting game…till they hooked their fingers into her cracks and flaws, and she held them there. And struck.)

(Heroes aren’t weak. Heroes aren’t flawed. Heroes aren’t damned.)

(How did Natasha convince the world she was a hero?)

The glass door hisses open.

“She’d have you bleeding on the floor before you could even stand.” Barton steps inside, and the glass clunks shut behind him. It all takes more than two and three quarters of a second. Natalia hasn’t moved.

Barton smirks, a little jagged. “I haven’t beaten her in close combat for three years.” A rough, _come at it_ gesture. “Wanna take a stab?”

It unspools before her mind’s eye in perfect clarity: the length of her steps, the slick glide of her approach, the angle at which she’d block his first, wide swing-grab the wrist, bend the arm around his neck, _squeeze_.

Moments after she’s risen to her feet, she does block his first swing. But he moves with his wrist, whirls around with her hand in tow, plows the other elbow into the back of her neck. Pain blooms into existence, faster and sharper than she’s ever experienced with a blow.

(looks like she wasn’t the only one watching the film behind her eyelids.)

Upper core strength. Taken into consideration, from henceforth. Jabs and kicks flow in fast order-she tries to pin his arms, and a minute later his weight hits her thighs-holding them dead and steadfast, Natalia’s chest heaving against the floor. She breaks the hold, spins and twists, but he darts back in time. Out of leverage, out of range, every single time. It’s like playing a game against someone who knows the manual by heart.

“Teammates are more than weaknesses.” And has he been talking all this while, too? It’s enough to incense her, if she let herself get carried away by these kind of things. “Her long range has gotten better, since we started training together, and that does more than just improve shooting skills. You start aiming better. Hitting better.” The next blow-on her collar bone, how did that not shatter his knuckles, is hard enough to force a gasp from her throat. “Sparring with Steve made her more conscious about dodging blows. Made her more slippery, more focused on inflicting damage with single hits.”

Her fist connects with the bridge of his nose, his head swings back, pupils dazed. The next second, her back’s hitting the glass, kidney screaming in agony. “Tony made her more ingenuous. Only so much you can do, against a metal, weaponised suit. She hasn’t bested Thor yet, but it only pushes her to keep building her core strength.”

She can feel blood seep, slow and inexorable, down the groove of her nostril. Her scalp is tacky with sweat, a thousand pin points on her body flaring with pain. She raises her eyes, chest lifting and falling from the exertion, and glimpses one scratch on Barton’s arm. One. “Fighting against people you can’t injure fatally boosts close combat skills. Makes you less dependent on weapons, sharp things.” Barton leans casually against the glass behind him, following her gaze with pin point accuracy. “Though she always had years of SHIELD training for weapon proficiency.”

Natalia straightens up. Barton doesn’t mirror her. “Though none of that is the reason why you’d never be able to kill her.” His teeth show, and it isn’t a smile. “We’d never let you.”

Natalia exhales.

_Loyal fool._

“And none of that is the reason I’m kicking your ass either.” There’s just that touch, of self-satisfaction. How does Natasha even bear this man. “It’s because I know the twelve combat styles you’ve tried against me in the past ten minutes. Even the uncontrolled, untrained one that comes from a place before the Red Room.” The ugly name falls from his lips, like something natural. Like it’s a concept familiar to him, trusted to him, for years and years. “I know the moves you’ve made, the moves you’re making, the ones you reject, the ones you attempt after rejecting because the previous ones fail, the ones you will make, the ones you’ve never even tried.”

Barton finally pushes himself off the glass, walks to her. Pauses three inches away, turns his back and drops to the floor by her feet. The back of his neck gleams in the light, pale and vulnerable.

Natalia’s knees fold, giving up her vantage, an unsanctioned move. She hits the ground next to him, and pulls her heels close, hands wound around her knees.

 _Tell me about myself_ , she wants to say, because she’s even fooled mirrors before. He knows her. Her punches, her scissor kicks. The way her body shrugs from motion to motion, kill to kill.

Her smiles. That’s how he’d made her, isn’t it?

“Do you know how she came in from the cold?” He smells like resin and leather, and not oranges. This surprises her, somehow.

“Yes.” Natalia nods once, feels her hair brush against her scraped collarbones. “SHIELD sent you to exterminate her. You chose to make a different call.”

Barton’s head turns towards her, close enough that she can see the shadows under his jaw, the small blemishes and pores. The clinical lighting makes his glaucous irises shine. He’s murmuring. “Never used that word before. Exterminate.”

He knows her, except he can’t, because that would mean knowing the thoughts that coil slickly under her skin, and then she’d never be Natasha Romanov, Avenger. “Why did you spare her?”

Barton shrugs. “Don’t know. Not in those first seconds.” Distance begins to seep into his eyes, the harsher lines of his face growing soft. “She agreed to come with me. Agreed to be cuffed. We were waiting in the motel room, for SHIELD pickup. And I offered her a glass of water.”

 _Foolish_. Natalia’s brain immediately analyses. If it was made of glass, she could have impaled the shards in his femoral, up his jugular. If it was steel, she’d have knocked him out clean, blood seeping from the damp spot at the back of his skull. Even plastic…there wasn’t an object Natalia hadn’t learned to utilise to its full, fatalistic capacity.

“She raised her chin, looked me straight in the eye and refused it.” Barton’s mouth curls upwards, eyes lost in the fog of memory-the picture of wistfulness. “Said she was a Commie, and everyone knew Commies only drank vodka.”

Oh.

“Of course,” Barton continues, mouth upticking further, “there was only one suitable response to that. I told her that as human beings, we needed fresh, pure water to replenish our precious bodily fluids. So she had to drink up.”

“She balanced the glass between her cuffed hands, drained it down. And then…she made a _face._ ” Barton’s mouth screws up into something fond, and desperately painful. _He misses her,_ floats into Natalia’s head, and it twinges. “Said it tasted funny.”

And Natalia can complete the conversation inside her head. Barton’s eyes, so dangerously perceptive, narrowed in paranoia, suddenly widening in surprise. Natasha’s expressionless face, staring right back, wrists cuffed tight. The barely restrained mirth in his voice as he must’ve said, _“It’s the fluoride.”_

“-and she nodded, like the Black Widow had never been more serious in her life.” Barton’s grinning now, grinning freely and the twinge has metastasised to a raw hurt inside her chest. “Said back, straight faced- _‘fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous Communist plot you Americans have ever faced’._ ”

Quiet.

“You gave her a chance,” Natalia can hear herself speaking in the silence, words slow and deliberate. It doesn’t feel like it-feels like she has no control over her chords at all. “because she quoted _Dr Strangelove_ at you?”

The words don’t sound like they were purposely injected with emotion, crafted to achieve an agenda. They sound ill-made, stuttering; emotions clinging to the edges sloppily. Wonder. Disbelief. Pain.

Barton looks at her, nostalgia clearing from his gaze. His smile hasn’t fully faded. For the first time, it feels like his stare isn’t pin point accurate. Like he’s mixing his facts up, like a stranger isn’t crouched in his best friend’s body. Like she’s Natasha.

“You’ve watched _Dr Strangelove_?” He looks so…kind.

“It’s one of my favourite movies.” It’s a mumble, and her lips feel thick and her throat clumsy and nothing is as it’s supposed to be.

“Yeah. And _Casablanca._ ” Barton drops her gaze. He’s smiling again, and it’s directed at himself. “But you’ll always like _Wizard of Oz_ the best.”

 

They sit together, for a long time afterward. Backs pressed against the glass of her cell, shoulders an inch apart, breaths falling in tandem. Natalia thinks she might go to sleep, and the thought isn’t scary.

The last one, before blankness takes her mind, is.

_There’s no place like home._

_~_

They all come to visit her, in the days that follow.

 

Rogers has a permanently downturned mouth, a concerned furrow between his eyebrows. He stands two steps within the doorway for the first ten minutes, then starts pacing. Stands closer, then apart, eyes rising to meet hers, then face turning away-like he has no protocol for this, the slightest idea of what he’s supposed to do

“You taught me how to fight.” He blurts, and Natalia raises a curious brow. “I knew how…Basic was great for me just starting out, you know. But you…” His fingers curl and flex by his sides, his face takes on a determined cast as if bent on finishing this through. “You taught me to use…my body as more than a battering ram. Showed how I could do more than just punch and hit things with a shield.”

And that’s a little jolt; a little heady reminder. It’s not the myth she grew up revering, but still. She taught _Captain America_ how to fight.

…no. Not she. Natasha Romanov.

“You were the first friend I made in this world.” He says _you_ , though. Instead of _she_ , unlike Barton. Says it with sincere blue eyes, says it like emotions are meant to be flaunted, and it mixes things up in her head. “The first real…link. You treated me like I was something real. Something more than a soldier, or the punchline to a joke.”

They’re more than overly sincere declarations, though. Natalia can glimpse the logic to them, the rationale, even if Rogers can’t. Winning the loyalty of Captain America…that’s some heavy currency in this world. And if all it took was some Krav Maga lessons, a couple of pretend vulnerable conversations-then that’s an easy bargain.

“You were bent on setting me up with people.” Rogers says ruefully, and Natalia’s mind stutters. “Even Bucky hadn’t been this invested in finding me someone. I’d gotten used to the awkward _you-seem-nice-but-I-really-don’t-want-to-date_ texts. Even saved a draft template version.” He pronounces the words, draft and template together with something like pride.

(There’s a voice in her head, letting her know that that’s adorable.)

But her mind is caught in the lack of rationale. Winning someone’s trust doesn’t impel you to go hunting for a soulmate for them. The logical way to proceed would have been to set up her trustworthiness, and seduce the Captain herself. The importance of an ally like him couldn’t be understated. A romantic entanglement would have secured that.

“I didn’t want you to stay down here, but Clint says that you’ll understand.” Rogers’ mouth is downturned again, and…it’s because of her. He’s upset for her. “He also said that you weren’t…necessarily part of the team in your world and-”

And? Natalia is a little curious how he’s going to end that, for all that a part of her mind is still trying to find the possible advantages of her alternate self’s investment in the Captain’s love life.

“And I wanted to let you know.” His jaw is straight, his eyes are clear. Distrust is distilled into the blood in her veins, but she can’t find a way to disbelieve this. “You make an excellent Avenger. And I’m glad you’re on my team.”

Irrational perhaps, from a self-serving standpoint. But from a standpoint of wanting to make the man happy…Natasha’s actions make perfect sense.

Natalia blinks, and says nothing.

 

Thor is…strangely easy. She hears the clanking of the armour before he enters the room-sweeps into it, scarlet cape flaring behind him. She sees cerulean eyes take stock: the lack of furnishing, the unforgiving white lighting, the hexagonal glass cage right at the centre. Blonde brows pull together, as if in pain.

He talks, and she listens. Accounts of how the Avengers first met, the innumerable clashes and unavoidable friction. How they eventually became a team. He talks of the weather outside, and the birds twittering on the trees, and how the cars blow black smoke high up into the air. He talks of Asgard and its golden halls, the warriors and the healers, Yggdrasil and the curve of the Bifrost, glittering under starlight. He talks about what they had for breakfast, about the latest thing Stark and Rogers are competing over, about Banner’s research and Barton’s range practice.

And there’s nothing for Natalia to morph into, because Thor expects nothing and is looking for nothing and it couldn’t be clearer that he belongs to another world-ignorant of the laws of this one, offering so much and demanding so little. He talks for hours without his voice hoarsening, and it’s strangely easy to believe that this man could be worthy of anything.

Natalia hasn’t spoken a word since he stepped into the room, but as he turns to leave, it’s only too easy. “You didn’t say it.”

Thor turns his head, tilts it a little to the side in question, expression open and curious.

“You’ve been choking back on something, ever since you entered the room.” Natalia doesn’t usually put on a display of her skills like this, but. He’s given so much, asked for so little. “You’ve said everything else, but not the first thing on your mind.”

Thor watches her steadily. Something complicated overtakes his face, something inscrutable. She hadn’t pegged him as one for complex emotions, but there’s a niggling instinct that she could know him for years, and still know nothing.

“It was a deliberate choice.” His voice is deep, and vibrates somewhere in the centre of her chest. “I wished to refrain from giving offence. But if anyone could comprehend it, it would probably be you.”

Natalia waits.

“You remind me of my brother.” Thor’s deep voice cracks, right through the centre. He’s still, so still, shoulders broad and chest heavy. “There’s a veil, between you and the rest of the world. And every time someone means to reach through, you transform and slip away, and we’re left but with shadow, and air in our grasp.”

“You think we’re reaching for the mirage. You think if we glimpsed the reality, we’d change our minds.”

“You didn’t change your mind, did you.” Natalia’s heartbeat thrums out a lie, beating so steadily. She can hear the rush of blood in her eardrums.

“Not in a thousand years.” Thor smiles, lined and weary. He doesn’t seem at the end of his tether. Not yet. “And not for the next thousand to come.”

 

“Lovely morning, wouldn’t you agree Agent Romanov?” Stark bares his teeth, smile hard and precise. “Birds are singing, sun is shining. I feel like I’m in a Disney movie.”

The silence that follows the statement is absolute. Not a distorted voice up three floors, not an echoing footstep in the distance. Not even the faintest electronic hum of the austere lighting.

He’s good, Natalia reflects, as the seconds drag by. He’s clearly looking to engage, and she’s tailored to provide whatever the opposing party is looking for…except he clearly is tailored to generate a contrary response in whoever he opposes, because she’s not talking.

“You’re terrifying, you know.” The heels of his shoes click against the floor as he moves ninety degrees around the cell, eyes sharp and unflinching. Natalia doesn’t turn her head to follow him. “I know we use this punchline way too often for it to be remotely funny anymore…but you genuinely are. Wake up somewhere with no clue where you are and who’s around you…and you slot in place without a glitch. No fear. No panic.”

Natalia stares ahead.

“Without Barton…we’d have bought it too, you know. Let you fight on the team, invite you over for Movie night.” Stark slides his hands into his trouser pockets, movements casual and gaze relentless. “Hell, you pulled off a lullaby and you apparently hadn’t even seen the Hulk before.”

She can still feel the phantom touch of invulnerable skin on her palm, blink and see the trust limned in hazel eyes. It’s like another unreal dream, injected into her subconscious. It doesn’t belong to her.

“I’m almost grateful, really.” Stark’s mouth twists to the side. “You make my paranoia issues feel all justified.

 _So there’s one person in this building who isn’t a moron_. Her voice is soft, “You don’t trust me?”

Stark’s eyes flash. “Wrong pronoun.”

“You don’t seem like the kind of person to invite someone he doesn’t trust into the safety of his home.”

Stark’s smile is lightning fast. “Peer pressure.” Then, in the lightest of tones. “The others haven’t been at the business end of your ‘oh wait, you thought this was my _real_ face’ shtick before.”

Natalia doesn’t inflect much into her response; the conversation passes by as casually as Stark’s set the pace. “And you deferred to their opinion anyway?”

“Here’s the clincher, Agent Romanov.” But apparently, Stark’s in the mood to ratchet things up a bit. His following words are coolly blunt. “People don’t like being lied to. But that doesn’t always mean they’re owed the truth.”

Another penetrating smile, to slice through the tension. “Besides, I’m a petty kinda guy. My only beef with you has always been that time you rejected me from the boy band.”

Thought is…a little muddled, following that revelation. “I…told you you couldn’t be an Avenger?”

(Muddled, may be putting it a little lightly. The child is thrashing at the back of her head again. _Who let **me** decide?)_

“I’ve got a psych eval for you, Romanov.” He’s paced around the corner of the cage again, enough to meet her eyes head on. Natalia doesn’t avert her eyes; Stark’s mouth curls. “Pathological liar. Mild sociopathy. A disturbing inclination towards violence.”

Natalia doesn’t breathe.

“All these might seem like deal-breakers…except the teensy tiny fact that all of these are the _reason_ you’re the Black Widow.” His eyes are bright, brighter than most flames. “The saving the world kind, not the assassinating senators for deranged Russians kind. Heroes aren’t healthy. If everything was alright with our heads, we’d be swanning off to our corporate day jobs and dropping our kids off at daycare, not wandering around trying to punch evil in the face.”

She exhales. Her pounding heart hasn’t skipped a beat. “I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”

“When I said wrong pronoun, I meant _you_ don’t trust you.” The words drop fast and hard and forceful. Stark isn’t smiling anymore. This is as real as it gets. “I didn’t get a free pass to the superheroic boy band; I forced my way in. No one _lets_ you become a hero. You’re just swanning about your corporate day job one day and something happens to stop you in your tracks…and boom. You decide.”

A beat.

He twists on his heels, and it’s like the air in the room has finally paused to take a breath. The sudden lapse in tension is _staggering_. “Toodles. Tell me if you want the air con turned up.”

“Wake up in a foreign place.” Her voice rings out suddenly, enough to startle her own skin into goosebumps. Her heart hasn’t slowed. “No fear. No panic.”

Stark turns around slowly.

“You’re a scientist.” Natalia licks chapped lips, tastes the dry air. “You know that the lack of an observable reaction doesn’t mean the subject is unaffected.”

Stark stares at her with impassive eyes. When he talks, his lips barely move. “We put on a good show, don’t we.”

She’s met him a couple of days ago…a week, maybe, at most. Any of them. It doesn’t feel that way.

Natalia lets out a breath, and doesn’t feel alone. “We do.”

 

Bru-…Banner, whose last name she knows now, doesn’t try to establish a connection. Look into her eyes, try to obtain or impart some lasting truth. He’s silent; apart from when he requests Natalia to roll up her sleeves, so he can run a tube-shaped detector up her forearms, along the inside of her elbows.

The metal surface is hovering inches above the back of her neck when he speaks, quieter than a murmur, “Travelling into alternate dimensions would involve blowing a hole into the space-time continuum. We’re making sure you haven’t come into contact with enough radiation to pose a threat to your health.”

Natalia can’t see the _we_ in the room.

“Fair.” Her voice matches his volume, barely carrying. “The others have been down here a lot.”

Banner’s mouth pulls to the side, as if the words he’s about to deliver are ironically, bitterly amusing. “Radiation poisoning isn’t contagious.”

“It is if a body has absorbed enough radiation to start emitting it.” Natalia’s words depart her lips and Banner stills, detector hanging two inches away from her shoulder blade. She can feel its phantom touch, through fabric and air.

The detector starts moving again, after a couple of seconds. Ignoring the comment, moving on. Only the sound of breathing punctuates the air, until- “The amount of energy required to keep you in this universe for a prolonged amount of time would be colossal. We believe after the initial spark, there would be an…elastic band effect, so as to speak. Snapping things back into place. Sending you home.”

Her lips flicker briefly. It’s funny, in the way things aren’t funny at all-the idea of home. For a moment, she wants to ask what he thinks of it. The concept. A place where someone originates from? Belongs? Returns to, again and again?

Natalia was born in Murmansk, a city stretching over twenty kilometres along Kola Bay, occupying a spot along Russia’s northwestern shores. She belongs everywhere, as she was taught to. She returns again and again to the sight of Madame’s colourless eyes, her marble hands that have never squeezed Natalia’s shoulder on a job well done.

…but if home means safety, Natalia wants to know. Because then she could sit here, within twelve square feet of concrete and glass, and lay her head down to rest.

The…stirring in her chest that accompanies the thought is unfamiliar. Banner has already scanned her back and lower limbs; he’s standing face-to-face, head ducked, finishing with a cursory run over her clavicles. He’ll be done soon.

(He doesn’t smell of oranges either).

Her legs are twitchy, her toes flex in their booted confines. She’s restless. She’s poised on the edge of action…except she’s never executed this kind of action before. One not prompted by careful planning and analytical thought. One born of impulse. Emotion.

The metal hovers an inch above her collar bone, invisible hairs on her stinging skin rising to meet it. It withdraws; Banner stowing the device inside a patchy pocket with rustling motions.

“You can’t trust her.”

That’s it, the deed is done. All that is left now, is to push it to fruition.

Banner raises his head. Raises a calm eyebrow. “I’m sorry?”

“You can’t-” Natalia pauses, reevaluates. Well, they clearly _did_ , so that argument is null and void. Amends, “-shouldn’t. Shouldn’t trust her.”

Banner blinks. “I’m not very good at the pronoun game.” There’s something generously wry about his words. “Unlike super spies, I haven’t been instructed in the arcane art of mind reading.”

She has no patience for coy sentences, nicely made words. Her tone is flat and featureless. “You shouldn’t trust Natasha. None of you.”

A beat. There isn’t a flicker of surprise to Banner’s brown irises, not even a facial twitch. He meets her eyes, affixes a steady stare. It feels significant. “Any particular reason why?”

“She’s dangerous.”

Another pause. It’s like Banner is choosing his words with thought and caution, but the touch of his eyes feel blunt. “The other guy…the Hulk comes out whenever he senses a threat to my wellbeing.” His mouth twists, like Stark’s, except it feels less sharp and more jagged. “I can’t be hurt, even if I wanted to.”

 _I wanted to._ Not _someone_.

But there’s something else in that expression now, something creeping in-a touch of softness threaded through all the acrimony. “But the other guy trusts you. Which means around you…I’m in legitimate danger.”

The smile is pale and wan, but it dawns all the same. “I came to terms with that a long time ago.”

It angers her, that smile. It bubbles up in her throat, mixing freely with the churning in her chest to create a black upheaval that she can barely hold back. The child at the back of her head is screaming. Natalia can’t, she doesn’t know how. She’s just subliminally aware of the whitening of her knuckles, the veins in her neck standing taut, the crescent impressions in her palm, the tightening muscles of her jaw.

She compacts the words in cold, tight blocks; bites the edges off with her teeth and releases them into the world. Enunciated fury. “Willingness. Means _nothing_. Just because you all are foolish enough to get hurt, doesn’t mean you _have_ to _._ ”

Dark eyes watch her carefully. Once, they were limned in green. Trusting, always trusting. “Natalia?”

 She can feel her stomach pulling in. Tight; so tight it feels like she’ll never inhale again.

_“Natalia?”_

_“Yes.”_

_“I’m Clint Barton.”_

_“I know.”_

“I killed him.”

 

Banner says nothing.

 

“Kosovo. Many years ago…I don’t exactly remember when.” There are brighter things, in her memory. Like the shine of polluted sunlight on an arrow, catching against the corner of her vision. “Noon, in a dingy alleyway. I was slipping out the back door, mission completed, ready to disappear. He was waiting outside for me, rooftop of the neighbouring tenement. Had an arrow nocked on the string, aimed at my neck.”

Natalia doesn’t breathe. Her chest is burning. “We looked at each other, for several seconds. He didn’t shoot. Lowered his bow, after a minute. Strung it on his shoulder, clambered down the wall of the building like an acrobat.” Like something in the circus. She’d seen circuses on film before, in black and white. Bright and marvellous.

“He came towards me.” The voice strings out, thin and emaciated. She wishes she could get it to stop. “I stabbed him.”

She doesn’t remember blood, on her hand. She’s better than that. Strike with maximum trauma, minimum bleeding. Reduces the mess, that way. There was just the wooden hilt, buried deep, and a darkened stain on his tac vest.

“I…” Her jaw moves soundlessly for eternal seconds, pulled longer and longer till they fray apart. “I never knew what he wanted to say.”

Sightless eyes. Green or blue or grey, she could never quite decide.

“Hawkeye. Barton. Clint.” Her tongue curls around each word, defiles it. “He’s dead in my world. My home. I made it so.”

 

He doesn’t accuse her. Doesn’t forgive her. Banner stands with her, for several long moments. His eyes are blank. Dammed off, in that way you know a person is beating against the walls inside.

“So your recompense…” It’s not until this moment that she realises that Banner never dropped her gaze. “...is to go back to work for the organisation that led you to this.”

The words sound helpless in her head. She doesn’t know what they’re like, hanging in the air. “I don’t know anything but this.”

 He still hasn’t looked away. Something tells her he isn’t like this very often. Gaze steadfast and assured. “Now you do.”

_“Heroes aren’t healthy…you decide.”_

_“And not for the next thousand to come.”_

_“I’m glad you’re on my team.”_

_“You’ll always like Wizard of Oz best.”_

There’s an old smile curling up Banner’s mouth, Natalia doesn’t know how he lets it out. “A friend told me something, once. That she had red in her ledger, and she needed to wipe it out. When you’ve got that much debt…moving over to the other column is the only thing that makes sense.”

Natalia doesn’t want to breathe, but air leaks past anyway, sinking into her lungs. “Can you ever make up for it?”

“No.” He isn’t certain much, either. This though. Bruce Banner could inscribe the cold certainty of this on his grave. “Never. But as long as we’re washing and not adding to the stain…it’s bearable.”

He moves back a step. Two. His fingers are rustling in his coat pockets; she can see the movement outlined against the weave. He’s preparing to leave.

There’s just one more thing. “The lullaby. Why trust her with it?”

Banner turns. She can’t see his expression anymore.

“She trusted me first.”

 

~

 

She wakes up in a dimmed room.

The air smells musty, dust motes crawling up her nostrils. Underlying the dust is something foggy and ephemeral…incense, maybe. Sandalwood. Darkness blankets her lids, but not in the fashion of absolute darkness. Still daylight, then. Drawn blinds, maybe. She shifts imperceptibly and the bedspread shifts with the motion-heavy and rough under her fingertips. Brocade.

This isn’t a place she’s been in before.

Also, there’s a living weight at the end of the mattress, but she’s concentrating on the nuances first.

Her eyes blink open. The ceiling is dark, fine cracks latticed through the plaster. There’s a cobweb at the far right corner. A Havells ceiling fan hangs motionless above her head, next to a solitary, flickering tubelight.

The muscles in her stomach contract as she pushes herself to a seated position, propped on the weight of her palms. The brocade spread twists again with the motion-a faded, forest green with frayed golden thread that peeks out and catches the flickering light in places.

“Here to kill me, Dr Banner? Because that isn’t going to work out for everyone.”

 Bruce Banner watches her from his seat at the other end of the bed, feet stilled on the tiled floor, hands folded on his thighs. Eyes unreadable. “Not everyone, no.”

Natalia folds her legs under her thighs, expression calm and unchanged. She can feel the cold shape of her gun pressed against the skin of her waist, the steel of the knife against her lower shin. There’s a retractable cord threaded into her sleeve, for emergencies. Looks like she’s gotten all her duds back.

“That sounded vaguely threatening.”

Ba-…Bruce shifts, as if to face her better. It’s meant to make her flinch. Natalia doesn’t blink.

Bruce smiles, a mild thing, inoffensive and unamused. “Are you trying to taunt me? I feel I need to warn you that it brings out the worst in me.”

She pinches the bedspread under her index and middle finger, pulls it up till it forms a green peak. “I think I can handle it.”

Bruce stares at her for several seconds, eyes wide and searching.

The words come slowly, after. “I’m afraid I’m at a disadvantage. You know my name, while I don’t know yours.”

“Natasha.” She says. Her heart beats on steadily.

“Do you remember what happened, Natasha?”

“Why don’t you tell me.” She flattens the peaked fabric under her finger again. “And I’ll tell you if I remember.”

Quiet.

“We’re in Mumbai.” Bruce stands up, shifts away. Now that he says it, Natalia can see the way his curls are flattened to his scalp by the humidity. “There was a conference going on, at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, on the changing nature of cosmic radiation. You and I were both present.”

The images rise to the surface of her mind, like dead bodies finally revealing themselves from the deep. Like returning to this world was the key. The tacky lipstick on her teeth, the bunned hair, the sensible heels. A small white lanyard, with an embossed logo and a name spelled out in two languages- _Yelena Belova._

“Did I decide to retire to your…” Another brisk onceover of the room, just for show. “..antiquely tasteful room for the night?”

“This is a SHIELD safehouse.” Bruce tucks his hands into the pockets of his well-worn trousers, as if fearful of leaving his knuckles bare. “Circumstances…occurred which necessitated bringing you here. I’d have asked for your consent but you were knocked out at the time.”

“Stop lying to me.” The words leave her lips, smooth and easy. For a second, Natalia doesn’t know who is speaking. “SHIELD knew that Dr Moreau was my next mark, that this conference would be the simplest opportunity to get to her. So they sent you.”

“Of course. Me, a renowned scientist specialising in gamma rays, being at a conference on radiation is just a gigantic coincidence.” The sarcasm is sparingly used, but skilfully executed. Bruce regards her calmly, but the caustic tinge to his words is unmistakable. “I’m not a SHIELD agent.”

“I know.” Natalia blinks in the dimness. “You’re just the only one I can’t kill.”

_“Around you…I’m in legitimate danger.”_

_Not yet._

“Ah, right. Black Widow, master assassin.” The light catches off Bruce’s glasses, a there-and-gone glare. “For someone who speaks so casually of killing, your first response to a critical situation is…odd.”

More images. The stark, frightened lines of Moreau’s face, lit electric blue by the crackling equipment. The soft click of the safety on the gun, the trigger smooth under Natalia’s finger. A hand closing on her shoulder, the hum from the machinery climbing in pitch and amplitude, till it felt like it would melt the bones in her sockets. The light turning blinding white. Natalia whipping her torso around, back bearing the brunt of the shockwave, grabbing the hand and pushing the body down. Startled hazel eyes.

Bruce dips his head, and brown irises sweep back into view. Cool and unassailable. “You saved me.”

“You can’t be hurt.”

“Not the point.” Bruce pushes the glasses up the bridge of his nose. “In that second, you didn’t know. In that second, I wasn’t a mark. In that second, you thought better you than me.”

“I wasn’t hurt either.” The thing in her chest is beginning to move again. Getting to its feet, slow and lumbering. “A couple of hours of unconsciousness. A few hallucinations.”

_“Ready to save the world?”_

“You compromised your mission. Compromised yourself.” Bruce exhales, dust motes swirling crazily in the air he agitates. “The authorities had started swooping in. The police had been called.”

“So you brought me here.” She can still feel them against her skin, cold, unrelenting shapes-carbonadium, steel, gunmetal. She wants to throw them away. But they are the reason she’s the Black Widow. “What now? SHIELD takes me into custody?”

“There are…people who believe that you can do better things than rot in a jail cell.” Bruce’s tone expresses no opinions, one way or the other. It’s strange how he manages it, this conflagration of trust without belief. “SHIELD might have been the place for you once. Not now.”

Natalia bids farewell to the fading memory of _‘Agent Romanov’_ in her head. It doesn’t sting.

“We can still wait here till extraction.” Bruce takes his glasses off entirely, wipes at the smudges with his sleeve. “My…colleagues should be along to pick us up shortly.”

It should seem wrong. It does seem wrong. To be offered the glimmer of a chance, so easily. But her other self had killed too. And she’d been brought into the fold anyway. Deaths are deaths, no life over another. Even if the death is of a man who could have died _for_ her, in another life. They don’t…won’t care.

She does. But the only difference it makes, in the end, is that she has a heavier ledger.

Bruce puts on his glasses again. “Do you need anything?”

“Could you…” She’s murmuring. The words already formed, as she adapts and adjusts. Like she always does. “...get me something from the drugstore, maybe? Bodywash. I feel grimy.”

Like any safehouse, the place should be outfitted with cameras. He would be able to tell if she decided to crawl out through the window during his absence, not that he’d be able to stop her.

She sees the knowledge of all those facts glimmer in his eyes. Bruce nods anyway. “Any particular kind?”

She usually factors her products to the tastes of her marks, or goes scentless. Smell can be a powerful memory, and she’s no one to be remembered. But this time…

Natasha smiles, a quick sunburst. “I’m thinking oranges.”

 

  _individuality: the particular character, or aggregate of qualities, that distinguishes one person or thing from others._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed this as much as I enjoyed writing it. I might have a couple more oneshots marinating in my head about this verse, if there's interest. Please leave a comment if you liked :)


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